Talk:The Leopard

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[edit] Quotation

"For things to remain the same, everything must change" (spoken by Tancredi) was changed (anonymously and without citation) to "For things to remain the same, things will have to change." I have neither the Italian original nor the published English translation at hand, but the former seems more apt. Neither cites a specific source. This should be followed up and sourced. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:15, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

• Quick web search on '"For things to remain the same" +Tancredi -Wikipedia' overwhelmingly gives the old version. I will revert for now, but this should still be sourced. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:17, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

• It doesn't make that much difference, as neither version is a very literal translation of the Italian original, which would be, I believe, something like "if we want everything to remain the same, everything must change". The repetition of "tutto" makes the original stronger than either English version. The safe way would be to stick to the most respected English translation of the book, it seems. RodC 01:58, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, I found the source for "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." Translation by Archibald Colquhoun, Pantheon, 1960, p.40. (Library of Congress number 60-6794, this predates ISBNs. Same translation and pagination later re-issued as ISBN 0-394-74949-9, Random House, 1982.) Someone could have spared me 15 minutes by citing in the first place. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:15, September 9, 2005 (UTC)

I don't have an Italian-lanaguage copy handy to cite page number, but the original of the quotation is "Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga com'è bisogna che tutto cambi" according to this site that carefully compares the film to the book (I'll add that as an external link, great stuff. I still think the other translation is more felicitous, because it picks up the "tutto/tutto". Does anyone know where it comes from (other than being lots of places on the web)? -- Jmabel | Talk 06:42, September 9, 2005 (UTC)

• If we're going for a literal translation, it should be something like, "If we want everything to remain as it is, it is necessary that everything change," or, "... everything must change." It's a question of whether we want an accurate translation of the phrase or whether we want to include the quote as it most often appears in English versions of the novel. | Klaw 18:52, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
  • The first is certainly quite literal. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:32, September 10, 2005 (UTC)
  • Colquhoun's seems to be the only widely printed translation, FWIW. -- Jmabel | Talk
    • Well, Colquhoun's is clumsy, but I'm comfortable with using it given that it's the one a user is most likely to find in his copy of the book. (Not to mention the fact that if we go with something else, we'll have a steady stream of users changing the quotation in the article to match what's in their copies.) | Klaw 17:07, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
      • Yup. From what I've been able to read of it, Lampedusa's original is beautifully written. Colquhoun's translation isn't awful, but it sure could be better. But it's what we've got, let's use it. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:46, September 10, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] English version of the title: a trivium

According to my dictionary a gattopardo isn’t a leopard at all. It’s a serval (or less likely in this case) an American ocelot. I suppose The Serval wouldn’t have been as catchy a title.

Interestingly, while the WP article states that the beast is are now very rare north of the Sahara, the map on that page of its current range does show indicate a colony on the African coast not that far from Lampedusa.

Now, does that change my feelings about the book? Well…yes, I think it does, a bit. —This unsigned comment was added by Ian Spackman (talk • contribs) 21 March 2006.